Post-Election FB Diary (2) After the Explosion
6 January 5:15pm
Trump message to protesters invading the Capitol: he loves them and everyone knows he won the election.
This is the president you gave us, Trump voters.
6 January 8:54pm
Not a huge fan of Mitch McConnell, and I didn’t agree with everything he said today, but hats off to him for an eloquent speech in defense of our democracy even though it put him in opposition to the president and many of the voters in his party. We shouldn’t have to applaud a Congressional leader saying the kind of stuff we all learned in Civics 101, but that’s what the country has come to.
“We’re debating a step that has never been taken in American history. Whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. I’ve served 36 years in the Senate. This’ll be the most important vote I’ve ever cast. President Trump claims the election was stolen. The assertions range from specific local allegations to constitutional arguments, to sweeping conspiracy theories. I supported the President’s right to use the legal system. Dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms all across our country. But over and over the courts rejected these claims, including all star judges, whom the President himself has nominated…
“But my colleagues, nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale, the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election. Nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence…. The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever… [If] This election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would be a scramble for power at any cost.” –Mitch McConnell, Senate Floor, 1/6/2021
6 January 9:43pm
“The objectors have claimed they are doing so on behalf of the voters. Have an audit, they say, to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen. Please! No Congressional led audit will ever convince those voters, particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election.” -Mitt Romney, Senate floor, 1/6/2021
7-8 January
Trump must go immediately
7 January
If you are saying that it was unacceptable for a mob to break into the Capitol, but you aren’t criticizing Donald Trump’s role in this attack, you are part of the problem.
Trump has been weaving a fantasy of a stolen election which, if believed, would allow him to steal the election. He regaled his most fanatical followers with it for over an hour ending at 1:15pm, and then told them to go to the Capitol and be strong. By 1:24 police were evacuating the building because of mob attack. Trump declined to make any public statement for nearly THREE HOURS until 4:17pm when he tweeted his support for the mob but told them to go home.
Your tolerance for Trump’s attack on our democracy is intolerable.
Oregon Live: Timeline of Events
10 January
If Donald Trump announced tomorrow that Biden, Harris, and Democratic Congressional leadership was plotting with Venezuela and North Korea and had to be arrested, how many Americans would believe him?
11 January
Republicans: don’t do it for me.
Every single member of Congress should be calling for President Trump’s immediate resignation now. Not because I or Nancy Pelosi say so, but because what Trump did is an affront to all Americans, whether D, R, or something else.
I disagree with Mitch McConnell about judicial appointments and taxes, but it doesn’t surprise me that we agree on the rule of law. I thought everyone did.
There has been remarkable what-aboutism on Trump’s assault on Congress. What about all those riots this summer? What about something Nancy Pelosi said in 2018? The comparisons have all been invalid, but even if they were correct, even if previously Democrats had incited rioters to attack the government and dithered in stopping them, Republicans should still want to isolate and marginalize Trump for his crimes.
If, heaven forbid, President Biden ever incites a mob with baseless lies and sends them to attack the government, I will not consider it an attack on Republicans, but an attack on me. A president who refuses to concede electoral defeat is demanding to be a dictator. No one should want a dictator Trump, dictator Biden, dictator Obama, or any other dictator.
Each pass Republicans have given him resulted in a bigger transgression the next time.
- When Trump falsely accused Obama of many things, people said it was bad but it wasn’t consequential.
- When he said he didn’t really lose the election, people said it could be consequential, but Congress would stop him.
- Now he has sent a mob against the Capitol, and people say well it wasn’t a real insurrection, Congress is still alive.
If he isn’t stopped now, what will the next step be?
11 January
Me: After everything that’s happened, its amazing some are still defending him.
Younger Son: We’re now like in Harry Potter when they keep saying “Voldemort’s here!” and everyone is saying “No, there’s no Voldemort,” and then Voldemort’s in the Ministry of Magic and the grownups are now like “Oh shit, Voldemort’s in the Ministry of Magic!”
Me: That’s the problem. It’s like Voldemort’s here and now they’re saying “Voldemort’s not so bad”
Son: It’s like, “Look, Voldemort’s here!” “Yeah, well Hunter Biden…”
12 January
Has Donald Trump said the words “Joe Biden will become President of the United States on January 20, 2021?” If not, we are in the same emergency as we were last Wednesday.
15 January
Puzzling conclusions I’m seeing from some Republicans:
1) I don’t believe the election was actually stolen…. …but I don’t blame Trump for saying it was.
2) I do believe the election was stolen because I don’t trust Democrats… …and because I don’t trust Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, Trump administration members such as William Barr, a Trump-appointed judge, Trump allies running the election in Georgia, or anyone else who contradicts Trump.
3) I believe the rioters who attacked the Capitol and killed a policeman committed a crime… …but it’s okay that Trump will not say that.
4) Anyway those rioters were actually antifa extremists trying to make Trump look bad… …which is why Trump told them “we love you. You’re very special.”
5) Democrats are hypocrites because they didn’t criticize other Democrats for inciting violence in riots last summer… …therefore I won’t criticize Trump for inciting violence now… …that will show those hypocrites!
No conservatives responded to this post.
Top image by: By TapTheForwardAssist – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98668026